Wireless data traffic has been growing at a very fast pace and the trend is still continuing. This trend is driven in part by substantial increases in processing power and features of mobile devices as well as advancements in data rates and sophisticated signal processing. The mobile devices access network resources by way of wireless access nodes, which can include base stations of a radio access network, e.g., a mobile cellular network, wireless access points of a WiFi network, a personal area network, and the like. Wireless data exchanges between the mobile devices and the nodes generally occur over a limited number of channels that fall within authorized portions of the radio frequency spectrum. Generally, radio access networks implement wireless communication protocols to manage such wireless data exchanges.
The wireless communication protocols can be used to “attach” user equipment to the wireless access node, e.g., to establish communications with a mobile device that roams into a cell, to handover mobile devices between neighboring cells, and the like. Despite advances in processing speeds and power consumption, wireless networks remain limited to some degree based on the limited available Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum. To improve the end user experience, mobile service providers are actively looking for mechanisms to improve system capacity and end user experience.